Wizards’ Worlds (4 page)

“This is an old land. I think though that none walk it now. We must remain here—unless
your people come seeking you. So upon us the shadow of another curse falls.”

Tanree shrugged. “I am Sulcar but there was none left to call me clan-sister. I worked
on the Kast-Boar without kin-tie. There will be no one to come hunting because of
me.” She stood up, her hands resting on her hips and turned her back deliberately
upon the sea.

“Falconer, if we be cursed, then that we live with. And, while one lives, the future
may still hold much, both good and ill. We need only face squarely what comes.”

There was a scream from the sky above them. The clouds parted, and, through weak sunlight,
wheeled the falcon. Tanree threw back her head to watch it.

“This is your land, as the sea is mine. What make you of it, Falconer?”

He also got to his feet. “My name is Rivery. And your words have merit. It is a time
for curses to slink back into shadows, allowing us to walk in the light, to see what
lies ahead.”

Shoulder to shoulder they went down from the hillock, the falcon swooping and soaring
above their heads.

Toads of Grimmerdale

T
HE
drifts of ice-crusted snow were growing both taller and wider. Hertha stopped to
catch her breath, ramming the butt of the hunting spear she had been using as a staff
into the drift before her, the smooth shaft breaking through the crust with difficulty.
She frowned at the broken hole without seeing it.

There was a long dagger at her belt, the short-hafted spear in her mittened hand.
And under her cloak she hugged to her the all too small bundle which she had brought
with her out of Horla’s Hold. The other burden which she carried lay within her, and
she forced herself to face squarely the fate it had brought upon her.

Now her lips firmed into a line, her chin went up. Suddenly she spat with a hiss of
breath. Shame—why should she feel shame? Had Kuno expected her to whine and wail,
perhaps crawl before him so he could “forgive” her, prove thus to his followers his
greatness of spirit?

She showed her teeth as might a cornered vixen and aimed a harder blow at the drift.
There was no reason for her to feel shame, the burden in her was not of wanton seeking.
Such things happened in times of war. She guessed
that when matters worked so, Kuno had not been backward himself in taking a woman
of the enemy.

It remained that her noble brother had sent her forth from Horla’s Hold because she
had not allowed his kitchen hags to brew some foul potion to perhaps poison her, as
well as what she bore. Had she so died he could have piously crossed hands at the
Thunderer’s altar and spoken of Fate’s will. And it would have ended neatly. In fact
she might believe that perhaps that had been the intention.

For a moment Hertha was startled at the grim march of her thoughts. Kuno—Kuno was
her
brother!
Two years ago she could not have thought so of him or any man! Before the war nearer
the Hold. But that was long before she set out for Landendale. Before she knew the
world as it was and not as she had believed it.

Hertha was glad she had been able to learn her lesson quickly. The thin-skinned maid
she had once been could not have fronted Kuno, could not have taken this road—

She felt the warmth of anger, a sullen glowing anger, heating as if she carried a
small brazier of coals under her cloak’s edge. So she went on, setting her rough boots
firmly to crunch across the drift edge. Nor did she turn to look back down at that
stone-walled keep which had sheltered those of her blood for five generations. The
sun was well westward, she must not linger on the trail. Few paths were broken now,
times in number she must halt and use the spear to sound out the footing. But it was
easy to keep in eye her landmarks of Mulma’s Needle and the Wyvern’s Wing.

Hertha was sure Kuno expected her to return to accept his conditions. She smiled wryly.
Kuno was so very certain of everything. And since he had beaten off the attack of
a straggling band of the enemy trying to fight their way to the dubious safety of
the coast, he had been insufferable.

The Dales were free in truth. But for Kuno to act as if the victories hard-won there
were his alone—! It had required all the might of High Hallack, together with
strange allies from the Waste, to break the invaders, to hunt and harry them to the
sea from which they had come. And that had taken a score of years to do.

Trewsdale had escaped, not because of any virtue, but by chance. But because fire
and sword had not riven there was no reason to cry upon unbroken walls like gamecocks.
Kuno had harried men already three-quarters beaten.

She reached the divide, to plod steadily on. The wind had been at work here, and her
path was free of snow. It was very old, that road, one of the reminders to be found
all across the dale land that her own people were late comers. Who had cut these ways
for their own treading?

The well-weathered carvings at the foot of the Wyvern’s Wing could be seen easily
now. So eroded they were by time that none could trace their meaning. But men—or intelligent
beings—had shaped them to a purpose. And that task must have been long in the doing.
Hertha reached out her mittened fingers to mark one of the now vague curves. She did
not believe they had any virtue in themselves, though the field workers did. But they
marked well her road.

Downslope again from this point, and now the wind’s lash did not cut at her. Though
again snow drifted. Two tens of days yet to the feast of Year Turn. This was the last
of the Year of the Hornet, next lay the Year of the Unicorn, which was a more fortunate
sign.

With the increase of snow Hertha once more found the footing dangerous. The bits of
broken crust worked in over the tops of her boots, even though she had drawn tight
their top straps, melted clammily against her foot sacks. She plodded on as the track
entered a fringe of scrub trees.

Evergreens, the foliage was dark in the dwindling light. But they arose to roof over
a road, keep off the drifts. And she came to a stream where ice had bridged from one
stony bank to the other. There she turned east to gain Gunnora’s shrine.

About its walls was a tangle of winter-killed garden. It
was a low building, and an archway faced her. No gate or door barred that and she
walked boldly in.

Once inside the outer wall she could see windows—round like the eyes of some great
feline regarding her sleepily—flanking a door by which hung a heavy bell-pull of wrought
metal in the form of Gunnora’s symbol of a ripened grain stalk entwined with a fruit-laden
vine.

Hertha leaned her spear against the wall that her hand might be free for a summons
pull. What answered was not any peal of bell, rather an odd, muted sound, as if someone
called in words she did not understand. That, too, she accepted, though she had not
been this way before and had only a few whispered words to send her here.

The leaves of the door parted. Though no one stood there to give her house greeting,
Hertha took that for an invitation to enter. She moved into gentle warmth, a fragrance
of herbs and flowers. As if she had, in that single step, passed from the sere death
of midwinter into the life of spring.

With the warmth and fragrance came a lightening of heart, so that the taut lines in
her face smoothed a little and her aching shoulders and back lost some of the stiffening
tension.

What light there was came from two lamps set on columns, one right, one left. She
was in a narrow entry, its walls painted with such colors as to make her believe that
she had truly entered a garden. Before her those ranks of flowers rippled, and she
realized that there hung a curtain, fashioned to repeat the wall design. Since there
still came no greeting, she put out her hand to the folds of that curtain.

But before she could finger it the length looped aside of itself, and she came into
a large room. Inside was a table with a chair drawn up to it. The table was set with
dishes, some covered as if they held viands which were to be kept warm, and a goblet
of crystal filled with a green liquid.

“Eat—drink—” a voice sighed through the chamber.

Startled, Hertha looked about the room over her shoulder. No one—And now that hunger
of which she had hardly been aware awoke full force. She dropped the spear to the
floor, laid her bundle beside it, let her cloak fall over both, and sat down in the
chair.

Though she could see no one, she spoke:

“To the giver of the feast, fair thanks. For the welcome of the gate, gratitude. To
the ruler of this house, fair fortune and bright sun on the morrow—” The formal words
rang a little hollow here. Hertha smiled at a sudden thought.

This was Gunnora’s shrine. Would the Great Lady need the well-wishing of any mortal?
Yet it seemed fitting that she make the guest speech.

There was no answer, though she hoped for one. At last, a little hesitantly, she sampled
the food spread before her, and found it such fare as might be on the feast table
of a Dales Lord. The green drink was refreshing, yet warming, with a subtle taste
of herbs. She held it in her mouth, trying to guess which gave it that flavor.

When she had finished she found that the last and largest covered basin held warm
water, on the surface of which floated petals of flowers. Flowers in the dead of winter!
And beside it was a towel, so she washed her hands and leaned back in the chair, wondering
what came next in Gunnora’s hall.

The silence in the room seemed to grow the greater. Hertha stirred. Surely there were
priestesses at the Shrine? Someone had prepared that meal, offered it to her with
those two words. She had come here for a purpose, and the need for action roused in
her again.

“Great Lady.” Hertha arose. Since she could see no one, she would speak to the empty
room. There was a door at the other end of the chamber, but it was closed.

“Great Lady,” she began again. She had never been deeply religious, though she kept
Light Day, made the harvest sacrifices, listened respectfully to the Mouth of Astron
at Morn Service. When she had been a little maid
her foster mother had given her Gunnora’s apple as a pendant to wear. But according
to custom that had been laid on the house altar when she came to marriageable age.
Of Gunnora’s mysteries she knew only what she had heard repeated woman to woman when
they sat apart from the men. For Gunnora was only for womankind, and when one was
carrying ripening seed within one, then she listened—

For the second time her words echoed. Now that feeling of impatience changed to something
else—awe, perhaps, or fear? Yet Gunnora did not hold by the petty rules of men. It
did not matter when you sought her if you be lawful wife or not.

As her distrust grew the second door swung silently open—another invitation. Leaving
her cloak, bundle, spear where they lay, Hertha went on. Here the smell of flowers
and herbs was stronger. Lazy curls of scented smoke arose from two braziers standing
at the head and foot of a couch, set as an altar at the foot of a pillar carved with
the ripened grain and fruited vine.

“Rest—” the sighing voice bade. And Hertha, the need for sleep suddenly as great as
her hunger had been, moved to that waiting bed, stretched out her wearied and aching
body. The curls of smoke thickened, spread over her as a coverlet. She closed her
eyes.

She was in a place of half light in which she sensed others coming and going, busied
about tasks. But she felt alone, lost. Then one moved to her and she saw a face she
knew, though a barrier of years had half dimmed it in her mind.

“Elfreda!” Hertha believed she had not called that name aloud, only thought it. But
her foster mother smiled, holding out her arms in the old, old welcome.

“Little dove, little love—” The old words were as soothing as healing salve laid on
an angry wound.

Tears came as Hertha had not allowed them to come before. She wept out sore hurt and
was comforted. Then that shade who was Elfreda drew her on, past all those
about their work, into a place of light, in which there was Another. And that one
Hertha could not look upon directly. But she heard a question asked, and to it she
made truthful answer.

“No,” she pressed her hands to her body, “what I carry I do not want to lose.”

And that brightness which was the Other grew. But there was another question, and
again Hertha answered:

“I hold two desires—that this child be mine alone, taking of no other heritage from
the manner of its begetting and him who forced me so. And, second, I wish to bring
to account the one who will not stand as its father.”

There was a long moment before the reply came. Then a spear of light shot from the
center core of the radiance, traced a symbol before Hertha. Though she had no training
in the Mysteries yet, this was plain for her reading.